


Secret Tunnel

by RobinWritesChirps



Series: Where everything is magi-cool (StarKid Hogwarts AU) [1]
Category: Firebringer - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Background Ja’far/Sherrezade, Banter, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, Femslash February, Fluff, Gryffindor, Gryffindor Common Room, Hogwarts, Pre-Relationship, Sneaking Out, Teasing, Teenagers, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: The excitement was keeping her wide awake and though she was pretending to be dozing off in the armchair right next to the fire as she actually had many times before, every part of her was shaking with anticipation of the escapade to come. It wasn’t every night she dared sneaking out of the dormitories to explore the vast thrilling world of the castle of Hogwarts. She needed a particular reason, though whether such reason was acceptable had been a hefty argument between herself and every head of authority above her. Gryffindor through and through, Zazzalil would have ignored a thousand prefects or professors if she thought the reward at the end of the chase was worth the possible punishment.Cute Jazzalil Hogwarts AU ficlet. Crushes abound.
Relationships: Jemilla/Zazzalil (Firebringer)
Series: Where everything is magi-cool (StarKid Hogwarts AU) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144154
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	Secret Tunnel

**Author's Note:**

> This fic sorts Jemilla and Zazzalil into Gryffindor because that’s what I believe. If you disagree and perceive them differently, all the better for you, but my fics are based on my perceptions of characters.

A quiet near-extinguished fire was crackling and purring in the fireplace, basking Zazzalil in its pleasant warmth. Spring was coming as chilly as they made them and she found herself lost in sweet memories of childhood when she would take icy swims in the lakes all around her good home with the Muggle children of the village. Perhaps another night, she might attempt to relive that and take a little dip into the Great Lake. Zazzy was no longer a child, though, not after four and a half years at Hogwarts and dreams bigger than her stature. She knew what she wanted and she knew to wait for the right time. Preferably after that group of second-years had gone to bed and the portrait exit was left unobserved till morning.

The excitement was keeping her wide awake and though she was pretending to be dozing off in the armchair right next to the fire as she actually had many times before, every part of her was shaking with anticipation of the escapade to come. It wasn’t every night she dared sneaking out of the dormitories to explore the vast thrilling world of the castle of Hogwarts. She needed a particular reason, though whether such reason was acceptable had been a hefty argument between herself and every head of authority above her. Gryffindor through and through, Zazzalil would have ignored a thousand prefects or professors if she thought the reward at the end of the chase was worth the possible punishment.

“Night,” the younger crowd were telling one another after finally wrapping up their essays due the next morning - it seemed to Zazzalil that she was not the only one who would give herself as short a time as she dared to finish assignments. “Fingers crossed it’s good enough!”

The small group climbed up their respective staircase, boys and girls, leaving the Common Room of the Gryffindor Tower empty of all but Zazzalil. She gave it a moment or two, an occasion for whichever of her fellow housemates to come and pick up some maybe forgotten item from the room they all shared. The fire truly was so pleasant anyways, so warm against her robes she wondered if she should take off her boots and extend her toes close to the hearth, but an owl hooting in the far distance caught her from her thoughts and reminded her of her plans. Pulling herself to her itchy feet, she stretched her arms well above her head, flexed her fingers in preparation. Her wand in hand, she was ready to make her escape. Adventure was but a portrait hole away.

“And where in the world do you think you’re going?”

Zazzalil broke into a deep sigh. Despite the frown deeper than the bottom of the lake, despite the hands at the hips and the natural air of authority that must have been a gift from birth, she walked right past Jemilla at the threshold of the door leading up to the dormitories. She heard a little cry of frustration and her way was barred before she could even make it to the exit. Jemilla was already in her nightgown, which was pale blue and overly embroidered at the collar and sleeves, ready for sleep if it weren’t for her blocking Zazzalil’s way, very much awake.

“Out of my way, J-Mills,” Zazzalil said with all the superiority being a year older than Jemilla conferred her. “I have important things to do.”

“More important than the House Cup? Can you start thinking of others for once in your life, Zazzalil?”

The way her name came out of Jemilla’s mouth was nothing like how it should be, dripping with disdain, and as such Zazzalil ignored her and pushed past. Jemilla hopped to the side once more to stop her from going any further.

“You can’t just tell me what to do,” Zazzalil grumbled. “You’re not even a prefect. Go back to bed, this isn’t any of your business.”

“Not _yet_ ,” Jemilla retorted, who was in her fourth annoying year of being a dull know-it-all suckup at Hogwarts. Zazzalil could well wait for the next year when she would inevitably be given the title, an honor Zazzalil had not been bestowed by far. “It doesn’t take a prefect to know I want Gryffindor to win the cup at the end of the year. Would you rather we lose to...”

“To Slytherin? Your mam’s house?” Jemilla’s brow furrowed with anger and Zazzalil gestured her back to the tower she had come from. “Aye, go on then, run off and call a prefect, I don’t care, I’ll be gone before you’re back.”

Jemilla glanced back at the doorway she had just occupied threateningly a moment prior, then at Zazzalil again, who could well see in her gaze the close balance she was weighing inside her own infuriating mind. The result that she ended up with was not the one Jemilla had hoped for, but she sighed and admitted defeat.

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “So you don’t get yourself killed.”

Zazzalil couldn’t believe her ears. She had no intention of letting the chance run by her, though, and immediately leapt out of the room through the portrait hole the Fat Lady held open for them.

“Or expelled, eh?”

“Expelled is right if you linger out too long,” the portrait retorted. “What is it with curfew and students? Oil and water, fire and ice...”

But neither Jemilla nor Zazzalil acknowledged her and on they went, lit only by the rays of moonlight beaming down through the narrow windows of the halls. Now they were keeping silent and Zazzalil wondered if Jemilla was as terrified as she was to get caught. If she was, then she was certain that such a bore as her was incapable of enjoying the fear for what it was, a pure sense of thrill. Without it, no true adventure could be complete. Zazzalil had rarely felt such a good mood.

“I don’t mind you getting expelled,” Jemilla said with bad mood. “Maybe we’ll have a chance to win for once...”

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Zazzalil replied. “We’re gonna win a whole lot better than a dumb cup if I get my way tonight.”

"Unless you’ve got a time traveling spell to propel me into the Ministry of Magic the day I’m elected as Minister of Magic, I highly doubt that."

All scolding aside, the night truly was beautiful. Zazzalil had grown up only a little more up north than the school, so the landscape was as familiar to her as the magic was foreign. Of course, the first few years of her life, she had been raised by her parents in all the arts of spells and charms, but when they had passed, she had been handed over to her Muggle grandparents who had no more understood their magical daughter than their granddaughter. When the owl had carried the letter to Hogwarts up to her little Scottish cottage, she had nearly believed it an elaborated prank from her grandparents until she had passed the gates of the school and seen the truth for herself. The incredible, still unbelievable yet undeniable truth of the power of magic. Whenever she let herself think of all the possibilities of it, her fingers prickled with something electric and she could not stop grinning. Suddenly there was a bounce to her footsteps that Jemilla was sure to pace down.

"What are you doing anyways?" She hissed in an exaggerated low whisper. "Some forbidden shit? Are you meeting up with _your girlfriend_? Can’t you wait till morning? I know you two keep snogging in the Astronomy Tower, Tiblyn told me."

Zazzalil snorted.

"She’s not my girlfriend," she replied. "We’re just going out. Well, not tonight, she says she’s afraid of sneaking out of her common room at night. We’re just sort of seeing each other. It’s not a big deal. She has nothing to do with this."

"Then where are we going?"

Zazzalil pulled out the parchment note she had made earlier in haste. It was a tad too dark to read it properly but she was keeping her wand as a very last resort and she was quite certain of where she was heading anyways. It wasn’t too much farther, even with the burden of company on the way.

"We’re almost there," she said and could barely contain her joy. "Just by the stairs!"

Jemilla kept watch as Zazzalil stopped in front of the statue of Gunhilda of Gorsemoor. She was a mighty sight, one-eyed and tall and so very hunched over, the large hump a promise of sweets and marvels to come. Zazzalil cleared her throat softly. Tapping the hump with the tip of her wand, she muttered the password she had jotted down secretively on her parchment. For once in her life, she hoped her reading would prove useful.

" _Dissendium_."

She waited. Nothing seemed to be happening at all and she paced around for a clue of what she was looking for though, in the dark, telling stone from shadow was a feat in and of itself. Jemilla was even more impatient.

"You’re going to get us detentions or points taken off for _nothing_?!"

"It’s not nothing! I read about this in a book Lady Sherrezade gave me, I promise!"

Surely, she must be missing something. Was a passageway supposed to appear on the wall behind the statue? Was there a riddle she was not aware of? Or perhaps was the book outdated and the tunnel had long since been filled out to prevent the very scenario she had hoped for tonight? A thousand possibilities came to mind, none of them much appealing to her. Even Jemilla began to examine the statue, curious as to why Zazzalil was making all this fuss of sneaking out in the first place.

"I think I’m missing it because it’s night," Zazzalil said. "Maybe I should light up my wand and…"

But Jemilla caught her arm tight to stop her. At first, Zazzalil thought that she was being too cautious as ever, but before she thought of anything to fight back with, the very reason why Jemilla was so worried echoed from the far end of the hall. She barely had the time to register a small lantern held between the two silhouettes that Jemilla was taking action. At first shoved behind the statue, Zazzalil was slammed into it head first and braced herself for a contact that never came. The statue had a crack at the back just narrow enough for her to slide right into, well hidden enough that she had not noticed it. She was followed very succinctly by Jemilla in a space much too small for two, but equally too small to extirpate themselves from it. Face to face, even in the dark Zazzalil could sense her glare. Their hands touched and the footsteps approached merely a few feet away. Zazzalil held her breath.

"I daresay I’m optimistic about the O.W.L.s this year. It’s a good batch all around," Professor Ja’far was saying. "All houses have their load of particularly bright witches and wizards. They’re a delight to instruct."

The tunnel she had sought for existed after all. She was trapped between the ecstasy of her search coming to fruition and the terrible dread of being nearly found out here. More crudely, she was trapped between Jemilla and the rock wall behind her. She tried to squirm and pull herself into the tunnel underneath but Jemilla caught her by the waist to stop her and Zazzalil, not willing to make a sound just then, had to stay obediently put.

"Clever students sometimes make for rowdy library-goers," Lady Sherrezade replied. "Though it’s worth the bothers when they have such a thirst to learn. Thanks again, my darling, for helping me clear up all that mess."

"Anything for you, dear."

There was some almost-silence and Zazzalil realized with horror that her favorite professor was kissing his wife. She nearly gasped but instead buried her disgust into Jemilla’s neck face first. She closed her eyes. At first awkward and tense, Jemilla patted her shoulders comfortingly. Zazzalil frowned for how nice it felt.

"We’ll be tired come morning," the voice of Ja’far said softly in the hall.

"Off to bed with us, then," Lady Sherrezade told him.

There was some laughter which Zazzalil ardently refused to know the cause of and finally, torturously, the footsteps echoed away till they could no longer hear anything.

" _Lumos_ ," she whispered.

The light shone on them and Zazzalil tore herself from the too cramped position to slide into the tunnel downwards, ready to explore. Jemilla had a whole other idea and ran after her to catch her arm.

"Are you fucking joking? You’re not going any further, we’re going back to the Common Room right now!"

"What?! But the whole point was to check if the tunnel _does_ go to Honeydukes!"

Jemilla pinched her nose.

"Honeydukes? What are you even talking about, Zazz?"

"The tunnel of the one-eyed witch statue," Zazzalil recited what she had written down on her piece of parchment, though she knew it by heart by now, "Is a secret tunnel from the castle of Hogwarts to the cellar of Honeydukes Sweetshop in Hogsmeade."

"Cellar…? And what are you going do then, rob them?!"

Zazzalil frowned. She had not thought of the implications of the plan and was starting to see the flaws in it, though she would not admit that to Jemilla. She looked at her. Suddenly, she noticed that Jemilla’s cheeks were flushed deep red, but as she saw no possible good answer to come of asking the question why, she said nothing at all.

"Come along, let’s go back to the tower," Jemilla said softly.

She offered a hand. Zazzalil glanced between the mysterious, enticing tunnel and a boring night back in her dormitory, but safe and sound and with an intact point count in the morning when students of all houses examined the hourglasses. She took Jemilla’s hand with a roll of the eyes. Together, they emerged from the statue again, whose hump resorbed back to normal just as they had left the tunnel. Zazzalil noticed their hands were still touching as they walked back along the long halls of Hogwarts. She would have said something, she was sure, at some point, but Jemilla seemed to come to the same realization as her and snatched the hand back as though it burned.

"So, you’re not with Keeri, huh?"

Zazzalil shrugged, then told herself that the gesture must have been all but invisible in the growing darkness, near pitch dark, so she spoke.

"Not really, I think. She’s a Hufflepuff, so…"

"So what, your house pride goes that far?"

"Well, doesn’t yours?"

They looked at each other. For the first time in the evening, Zazzalil found herself wishing she could see her better, closer, but they looked away and said nothing more.

"Balderdash," Jemilla told the Fat Lady on their way back into the Gryffindor Tower.

It was only when she crashed onto the closest chair that it truly sank into Zazzalil that they had come back unscathed and uncaught. She burst into nervous laughter and was, to her greatest surprise, soon joined by Jemilla. She smiled.

"You have to admit this was fun," she said and poked Jemilla’s shoulder to prompt a reaction.

Jemilla was fighting not to smirk.

"I won’t admit it."

"But you’re thinking it," Zazzalil grinned victoriously.

"I won’t _admit_ it," Jemilla repeated.

Zazzalil huffed, yawned. She rubbed her eyes and noted how tired she was now that she was here again. The fire had been refueled in their absence and was roaring bright for the night. Jemilla was still in that pretty nightgown of hers.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, so this was fun. And a goodnight to you, then."

She rose and began to walk towards the staircase but Jemilla cleared her throat, trotted to join her.

"When you inevitably do check out the tunnel again…" She said, not quite hesitant. Her hand touched Zazzalil’s, soft fingers, warm palm against hers. "Take me with you. I’d love some sweets."

She kissed Zazzalil’s cheek and climbed the stairs three steps at a time without looking back. Zazzalil stared in disbelief. She touched her cheek very faintly, for she was afraid the spell would break if she was too reckless this time. She had been bold enough for the night, she supposed. Another night, though, she would be the most daring of all. On that night, she was certain that she and Jemilla would steal something so sweet they would never stop at the one taste.

**Author's Note:**

> So are they gonna make out some day or… Let me know if you’d like more Hogwarts AU fics like this one, whether Jazzalil or otherwise!


End file.
